Realtime Data Handling
We have some catching up to do. This is a newsletter style post with subsections:
• Ocean DAO Grants
• Gitcoin Beta Grant
• Ocean Shipyard
• Putting funds to work
• Next steps
Ocean DAO Grants
Last summer we focused on building an extension to the Ocean Protocol Marketplace. We had noticed that the market didn’t support streaming data, only static assets and algorithmic code. So we applied for and received a grant from Ocean DAO to develop a “Streaming Data Asset” for the Market.
In order to build it we needed to collaborate with a developer so we searched in the Ocean community and found a guy who has experience developing on the Ocean platform. Together we built an ultra minimal MVP and submitted our deliverables, simultaneously applying for a second grant. That was also approved by the DAO and we built out the extension further, extending the Streaming Data Asset to handle time-based subscriptions.
The code is on Github. This is an example datastream asset that's published on the Polygon Mumbai testnet: “Realtime Vehicle Location Feed”.
In October 2022 the Ocean Foundation announced a change of focus. The DAO would be retired by becoming fully decentralized and autonomous, not requiring any governance. The Ocean organization then pivoted to focus on Data Farming.
This was disappointing yet understandable. The Ocean DAO was a vibrant sub-community with charismatic leaders. We’re thankful to players like @Malte van Medem, @N.E.Siri, and many others, including members of sister projects like DataLatte. It was a fostering environment with a “One for all and all for one” spirit.
We’re also aware that Ocean, as in the Foundation, is looking for ‘platform-market fit’. But since traction hasn’t transpired they’re changing their strategy. It’s obvious to anyone involved that they’re early to the game. Ocean is creating a market, one of the most challenging endeavors in business, but data consumers haven’t yet materialized.
Gitcoin Beta Grant
In April 2023 we applied for a Gitcoin Beta Round grant. We submitted our “Realtime Climate Data Market” project for Ocean Market, nicknamed ‘RealClime’ for short, in the Climate Solutions category. It was approved and we promoted the grant on Twitter and Telegram.
In total 11 donors funded our project, to whom we’re immensely grateful! 🙏
Gitcoin processed the data from all grant funders, filtering out Sybils and scammers. Then the Quadratic Funding was applied. It was impressive: our donations got multiplied 11x! We received the payout in July, together with the other grantees.
Thank you Gitcoin for building a versatile grant platform and managing the grants 💯
Gitcoin Grant Round 18 is coming up, starting at 12:00 UTC on Aug 15th, 2023. We’re going to apply.
Ocean Shipyard
Following on our Ocean DAO Grants we decided to apply for what the Foundation calls a Shipyard Grant:
It is made for entrepreneurs looking to build open-source Web3 solutions on Ocean, make valuable data available, build innovations and create value for the Ocean ecosystem.
As our project would be a contribution to the core code we thought it would align with the intentions, as explained in this blog post from Ocean founder Trent McConaghy: “What We’re Doing in 2023, and Why”.
Assembling the grant material was no small task. The Shipyard team expects a professional proposal with detailed problem/solution explanations, technical descriptions, a project planning Gantt Chart, and a budget broken down by milestone. We spent a lot of time working on the submission.
Too long, apparently. In June we heard from an insider that Ocean had shifted its focus. Building out the Market was no longer a priority. Instead, increasing enterprise adoption was the new direction. He advised us to submit the proposal, which we did, but as surmised we heard that “the focus of your project does not align with the current priorities at Ocean”.
There is a positive: compiling the proposal was a good exercise and we’ll take that practice forward to another endeavor.
Putting funds to work
We used a small portion of our Gitcoin grant money to register the ENS domain chaineresearch.ens. Besides augmenting the org’s identity it also eases transparency. The remaining funds have been deposited in an Idle Finance pool to earn interest.
Next steps
We’re going to make Hypercerts to affirm our contributors’ support for #PublicGoods.
We’ll be applying for Gitcoin Round 18. Keep an eye out for us and our sister projects.